Pickman’s Model or… A Muggle Wakes Up

Strange times, Matthew, when we turn to HPL with relief and the expectation of rational although somewhat tepid debate.

I hadn’t thought of Pickman being a changeling – although the inference is clearly there. If anything, I’d thought of his four times-great-grandmother who was hanged for witch, and thought that Pickman might have inherited some of her genes.

No, my real role for Pickman is HPL himself, in his impatience with the effete tea-cosy set of Beacon Hill and his hankering for

‘these ancient places (that) are dreaming gorgeously and over-flowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace’

Perhaps, however, the two roles are the same, in that HPL saw himself as a changeling, with more in common with the monsters and gods he depicted than with the people around him.

As you see, as always I start with a focus on the author, and not the story.

And thank you, btw, for giving us a break from the exegesis wars.

Here are a few thoughts:
1. I don’t find HPL particularly frightening on either the cosmic or the personal level, but I did enjoy the personal level more. The cosmic level is totally unbelievable to me.
2. HPL’s use of the world of Cotton Mather was interesting to me because I have studied that time period in history a fair amount. I, too, have an ancestress who was convicted of witchcraft in Fairfield, CT, during the witch scare; she was pardoned by the state governor, and I am pretty sure I am descended from another woman hanged as a witch in Massachusetts at the same time. Since I have read the details of their trials, the suppositions that HPL makes that Mather is correct in his descriptions of the “satanic” events is simply false to me. I did think of an author I read some years ago-I think it was Chuck Coulson-who really seemed to believe that the Bay colonies were under Satanic attack during Mather’s years. I was quite startled, to say the least, that he would believe such a thing.
3. I like the contrast of the horror being discussed over a coffee klatsch. What is so horrible about dog faces, anyway?
4. If one discovers true evil, one turns from it, as the narrator did.
5. I thought Pickman was a changeling, for the simple reason that if these beings seize human beings and replace them with their own, there must be a lot of these Changelings running about.

Here is the passage:

‘It came again, and louder. There was a vibration as if the wood had fallen farther than it had fallen before. After that followed a sharp grating noise, a shouted gibberish from Pickman, and the deafening dis-charge of all six chambers of a revolver, fired spectacularly as a lion–tamer might fire in the air for effect. A muffled squeal or squawk, and a thud. Then more wood and brick grating, a pause, and the opening of the door – at which I’ll confess I started violently. Pickman reappeared with his smoking weapon, cursing the bloated rats that infested the ancient well.’

Doesn’t sound like Elbereth to me, Matthew. More like: ‘No, you can’t have a midnight snack. Now unless you take your sorry monster a– back down to the basement by the time I count to three -” BLAM!

Back, foul creature, by the power give to me by the Great Cthulhu, back to the stygian depths!

I mean, given his heritage (witch or changeling) he wouldn’t be calling upon Varda to banish the beast, would he?

I suspect that you were a Robert E. Howard fan in another life.

I’m a little late in joining the HPL readings, so this was my first one. I think one of the main premises of the story is to show that the ordinary is often worse than the extraordinary if you look deeper into it. By disclosing this information over a cup of coffee the author is using a simple ritual and a sense of comfort to unseat the reader with the information about the beasts. Personal is more frightening than cosmic because it is literally in the protagonist’s pocket in the form of a photograph.
As far as using a benign location as an effective literary device, I believe it is effective simply because we’re all a little afraid of the shadows in the basement. If the author’s purpose is to frighten the reader, using the ordinary again to reveal something terrifying.
I also think that Pickman is an excellent representation of a changeling, again bringing back my point of the ordinary. The protagonist goes into the house thinking that Pickman is a normal man, and leaves with a much different opinion. The story drives the point home repeatedly that the ordinary is not what it seems, and can be more horrible than what we fancy to be extraordinary.
I don’t think it was the dog faces that were supposed to be frightening, just the idea that the images looked so real that they were almost breathing–something that even the artist couldn’t possibly imagine; you have to see it to paint it that accurately.
I do agree with Reyhan’s assessment that HPL is representing himself with Pickman’s character. As Pickman does with art, HPL does with literary works–revealing the horrible truths about the world using a creative outlet.

Nevillegirl’s comment reminded me about the coffee conversation.

I think it is an excellent device for tying the incredible to the mundane, and lending it a touch of reality. We may not easily believe in monsters living in pits, but we all know the smells and rituals of coffee drinking. In fact, I found the whole conversation an excellent way of framing the horror story. Many (most?) of HPL’s stories are told in the first person, but in Pickaman’s tale there is a strong sense of another person present. It was actually very well done.